Part 23
It may seem paradoxical to say this of the nation which produced Dante. But we must remember not to judge races by single and exceptional men of genius. Petrarch, the Troubadour of exquisite emotions, Boccaccio, who touches all the keys of life so lightly, Ariosto, with the smile of everlasting April on his lips, and Tasso, excellent alone when he confines himself to pathos or the picturesque, are no exceptions to what I have just said. Yet these poets pursued their art with conscious purpose. The tragic splendour of Greece, the majesty of Rome, were not unknown to them. Far more is it true that popular poetry in Italy, proceeding from the hearts of uncultivated peasants and expressing the national character in its simplicity, displays none of the stuff from which the greatest works of art in verse, epics and dramas, can be wrought. But within its own sphere of personal emotion, this popular poetry is exquisitely melodious, inexhaustibly rich, unique in modern literature for the direct expression which it has given to every shade of passion.
Signor Tigri's collection,[22] to which I shall confine my attention in this paper, consists of eleven hundred and eighty-five _rispetti_, with the addition of four hundred and sixty-one _stornelli_. Rispetto, it may be said in passing, is the name commonly given throughout Italy to short poems, varying from six to twelve lines, constructed on the principle of the octave stanza. That is to say, the first part of the rispetto consists of four or six lines with alternate rhymes, while one or more couplets, called the _ripresa_, complete the poem.[23] The stornello, or ritournelle, never exceeds three lines, and owes its name to the return which it makes at the end of the last line to the rhyme given by the emphatic word of the first. Browning, in his poem of 'Fra Lippo Lippi,' has accustomed English ears to one common species of the stornello,[24] which sets out with the name of a flower, and rhymes with it, as thus:
Fior di narciso. Prigionero d'amore mi son reso, Nel rimirare il tuo leggiadro viso.
The divisions of those two sorts of songs, to which Tigri gives names like The Beauty of Women, The Beauty of Men, Falling in Love, Serenades, Happy Love, Unhappy Love, Parting, Absence, Letters, Return to Home, Anger and Jealousy, Promises, Entreaties and Reproaches, Indifference, Treachery and Abandonment, prove with what fulness the various phases of the tender passion are treated. Through the whole fifteen hundred the one theme of Love is never relinquished. Only two persons, 'I' and 'thou,' appear upon the scene; yet so fresh and so various are the moods of feeling, that one can read them from first to last without too much satiety.
To seek for the authors of these ditties would be useless. Some of them may be as old as the fourteenth century; others may have been made yesterday. Some are the native product of the Tuscan mountain villages, especially of the regions round Pistoja and Siena, where on the spurs of the Apennines the purest Italian is vernacular. Some, again, are importations from other provinces, especially from Sicily and Naples, caught up by the peasants of Tuscany and adapted to their taste and style; for nothing travels faster than a _Volkslied_. Born some morning in a noisy street of Naples, or on the solitary slopes of Radicofani, before the week is out, a hundred voices are repeating it. Waggoners and pedlars carry it across the hills to distant towns. It floats with the fishermen from bay to bay, and marches with the conscript to his barrack in a far-off province. Who was the first to give it shape and form? No one asks, and no one cares. A student well acquainted with the habits of the people in these matters says, 'If they knew the author of a ditty, they would not learn it, far less if they discovered that it was a scholar's.' If the cadence takes their ear, they consecrate the song at once by placing it upon the honoured list of 'ancient lays.' Passing from lip to lip and from district to district, it receives additions and alterations, and becomes the property of a score of provinces. Meanwhile the poet from whose soul it blossomed that first morning like a flower, remains contented with obscurity. The wind has carried from his lips the thistledown of song, and sown it on a hundred hills and meadows, far and wide. After such wise is the birth of all truly popular compositions. Who knows, for instance, the veritable author of many of those mighty German chorals which sprang into being at the period of the Reformation? The first inspiration was given, probably, to a single mind; but the melody, as it has reached us, is the product of a thousand. This accounts for the variations which in different dialects and districts the same song presents. Meanwhile, it is sometimes possible to trace the authorship of a ballad with marked local character to an improvisatore famous in his village, or to one of those professional rhymesters whom the country-folk employ in the composition of love-letters to their sweethearts at a distance.[25] Tommaseo, in the preface to his 'Canti Popolari,' mentions in particular a Beatrice di Pian degli Ontani, whose poetry was famous through the mountains of Pistoja; and Tigri records by name a little girl called Cherubina, who made rispetti by the dozen as she watched her sheep upon the hills. One of the songs in his collection (p. 181) contains a direct reference to the village letter-writer:--
Salutatemi, bella, lo scrivano; Non lo conosco e non so chi si sia. A me mi pare un poeta sovrano, Tanto gli è sperto nella poesia.[26]
While I am writing thus about the production and dissemination of these love-songs, I cannot help remembering three days and nights which I once spent at sea between Genoa and Palermo, in the company of some conscripts who were going to join their regiment in Sicily. They were lads from the Milanese and Liguria, and they spent a great portion of their time in composing and singing poetry. One of them had a fine baritone voice; and when the sun had set, his comrades gathered round him and begged him to sing to them 'Con quella patetica tua voce.' Then followed hours of singing, the low monotonous melodies of his ditties harmonising wonderfully with the tranquillity of night, so clear and calm that the sky and all its stars were mirrored on the sea, through which we moved as if in a dream. Sometimes the songs provoked conversation, which, as is usual in Italy, turned mostly upon 'le bellezze delle donne.' I remember that once an animated discussion about the relative merits of blondes and brunettes nearly ended in a quarrel, when the youngest of the whole band, a boy of about seventeen, put a stop to the dispute by theatrically raising his eyes and arms to heaven and crying, 'Tu sei innamorato d' una grande Diana cacciatrice nera, ed io d' una bella Venere bionda.' Though they were but village lads, they supported their several opinions with arguments not unworthy of Firenzuola, and showed the greatest delicacy of feeling in the treatment of a subject which could scarcely have failed to reveal any latent coarseness.
The purity of all the Italian love-songs collected by Tigri is very remarkable.[27] Although the passion expressed in them is Oriental in its vehemence, not a word falls which could offend a virgin's ear. The one desire of lovers is lifelong union in marriage. The _damo_--for so a sweetheart is termed in Tuscany--trembles until he has gained the approval of his future mother-in-law, and forbids the girl he is courting to leave her house to talk to him at night:--
Dice che tu tì affacci alia finestra; Ma non tì dice che tu vada fuora, Perchè, la notte, è cosa disonesta.
All the language of his love is respectful. _Signore_, or master of my soul, _madonna, anima mia, dolce mio ben, nobil persona,_ are the terms of adoration with which he approaches his mistress. The elevation of feeling and perfect breeding which Manzoni has so well delineated in the loves of Renzo and Lucia are traditional among Italian country-folk. They are conscious that true gentleness is no matter of birth or fortune:--
E tu non mi lasciar per poverezza, Chè povertà non guasta gentilezza.[28]
This in itself constitutes an important element of culture, and explains to some extent the high romantic qualities of their impassioned poetry. The beauty of their land reveals still more. 'O fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint!' Virgil's exclamation is as true now as it was when he sang the labours of Italian country-folk some nineteen centuries ago. To a traveller from the north there is a pathos even in the contrast between the country in which these children of a happier climate toil, and those bleak, winter-beaten fields where our own peasants pass their lives. The cold nights and warm days of Tuscan springtime are like a Swiss summer. They make rich pasture and a hardy race of men. Tracts of corn and oats and rye alternate with patches of flax in full flower, with meadows yellow with buttercups or pink with ragged robin; the young vines, running from bough to bough of elm and mulberry, are just coming into leaf. The poplars are fresh with bright green foliage. On the verge of this blooming plain stand ancient cities ringed with hills, some rising to snowy Apennines, some covered with white convents and sparkling with villas. Cypresses shoot, black and spirelike, amid grey clouds of olive-boughs upon the slopes; and above, where vegetation borders on the barren rock, are masses of ilex and arbutus interspersed with chestnut-trees not yet in leaf. Men and women are everywhere at work, ploughing with great white oxen, or tilling the soil with spades six feet in length--Sabellian ligones. The songs of nightingales among acacia-trees, and the sharp scream of swallows wheeling in air, mingle with the monotonous chant that always rises from the country-people at their toil. Here and there on points of vantage, where the hill-slopes sink into the plain, cluster white villages with flower-like campanili. It is there that the veglia, or evening rendezvous of lovers, the serenades and balls and feste, of which one hears so much in the popular minstrelsy, take place. Of course it would not be difficult to paint the darker shades of this picture. Autumn comes, when the contadini of Lucca and Siena and Pistoja go forth to work in the unwholesome marshes of the Maremma, or of Corsica and Sardinia. Dismal superstitions and hereditary hatreds cast their blight over a life externally so fair. The bad government of centuries has perverted in many ways the instincts of a people naturally mild and cheerful and peace-loving. But as far as nature can make men happy, these husbandmen are surely to be reckoned fortunate, and in their songs we find little to remind us of what is otherwise than sunny in their lot.
A translator of these _Volkslieder_ has to contend with difficulties of no ordinary kind. The freshness of their phrases, the spontaneity of their sentiments, and the melody of their unstudied cadences, are inimitable. So again is the peculiar effect of their frequent transitions from the most fanciful imagery to the language of prose. No mere student can hope to rival, far less to reproduce, in a foreign tongue, the charm of verse which sprang untaught from the hearts of simple folk, which lives unwritten on the lips of lovers, and which should never be dissociated from singing.[29] There are, besides, peculiarities in the very structure of the popular rispetto. The constant repetition of the same phrase with slight variations, especially in the closing lines of the _ripresa_ of the Tuscan rispetto, gives an antique force and flavour to these ditties, like that which we appreciate in our own ballads, but which may easily, in the translation, degenerate into weakness and insipidity. The Tuscan rhymester, again, allows himself the utmost licence. It is usual to find mere assonances like _bene_ and _piacere, oro_ and _volo, ala_ and _alata_, in the place of rhymes; while such remote resemblances of sound as _colli_ and _poggi_, _lascia_ and _piazza_, are far from uncommon. To match these rhymes by joining 'home' and 'alone,' 'time' and 'shine,' &c, would of course be a matter of no difficulty; but it has seemed to me on the whole best to preserve, with some exceptions, such accuracy as the English ear requires. I fear, however, that, after all, these wild-flowers of song, transplanted to another climate and placed in a hothouse, will appear but pale and hectic by the side of their robuster brethren of the Tuscan hills.
In the following serenade many of the peculiarities which I have just noticed occur. I have also adhered to the irregularity of rhyme which may be usually observed about the middle of the poem (p. 103):--
Sleeping or waking, thou sweet face, Lift up thy fair and tender brow: List to thy love in this still place; He calls thee to thy window now: But bids thee not the house to quit, Since in the night this were not meet. Come to thy window, stay within; I stand without, and sing and sing: Come to thy window, stay at home; I stand without, and make my moan.
Here is a serenade of a more impassioned character (p. 99):--
I come to visit thee, my beauteous queen, Thee and the house where thou art harboured: All the long way upon my knees, my queen, I kiss the earth where'er thy footsteps tread. I kiss the earth, and gaze upon the wall, Whereby thou goest, maid imperial! I kiss the earth, and gaze upon the house, Whereby thou farest, queen most beauteous!
In the next the lover, who has passed the whole night beneath his sweetheart's window, takes leave at the break of day. The feeling of the half-hour before dawn, when the sound of bells rises to meet the growing light, and both form a prelude to the glare and noise of day, is expressed with much unconscious poetry (p. 105):--
I see the dawn e'en now begin to peer: Therefore I take my leave, and cease to sing, See how the windows open far and near, And hear the bells of morning, how they ring! Through heaven and earth the sounds of ringing swell; Therefore, bright jasmine flower, sweet maid, farewell! Through heaven and Rome the sound of ringing goes; Farewell, bright jasmine flower, sweet maiden rose! The next is more quaint (p. 99):--
I come by night, I come, my soul aflame; I come in this fair hour of your sweet sleep; And should I wake you up, it were a shame. I cannot sleep, and lo! I break your sleep. To wake you were a shame from your deep rest; Love never sleeps, nor they whom Love hath blest.
A very great many rispetti are simple panegyrics of the beloved, to find similitude for whose beauty heaven and earth are ransacked. The compliment of the first line in the following song is perfect (p. 23):--
Beauty was born with you, fair maid: The sun and moon inclined to you; On you the snow her whiteness laid The rose her rich and radiant hue: Saint Magdalen her hair unbound, And Cupid taught you how to wound-- How to wound hearts Dan Cupid taught: Your beauty drives me love-distraught.
The lady in the next was December's child (p. 25):--
O beauty, born in winter's night, Born in the month of spotless snow: Your face is like a rose so bright; Your mother may be proud of you! She may be proud, lady of love, Such sunlight shines her house above: She may be proud, lady of heaven, Such sunlight to her home is given.
The sea wind is the source of beauty to another (p. 16):--
Nay, marvel not you are so fair; For you beside the sea were born: The sea-waves keep you fresh and fair, Like roses on their leafy thorn. If roses grow on the rose-bush, Your roses through midwinter blush; If roses bloom on the rose-bed, Your face can show both white and red.
The eyes of a fourth are compared, after quite a new and original fashion, to stars (p. 210):--
The moon hath risen her plaint to lay Before the face of Love Divine. Saying in heaven she will not stay, Since you have stolen what made her shine: Aloud she wails with sorrow wan,-- She told her stars and two are gone: They are not there; you have them now; They are the eyes in your bright brow.
Nor are girls less ready to praise their lovers, but that they do not dwell so much on physical perfection. Here is a pleasant greeting (p. 124):--
O welcome, welcome, lily white, Thou fairest youth of all the valley! When I'm with you, my soul is light; I chase away dull melancholy. I chase all sadness from my heart: Then welcome, dearest that thou art! I chase all sadness from my side: Then welcome, O my love, my pride! I chase all sadness far away: Then welcome, welcome, love, to-day!
The image of a lily is very prettily treated in the next (p 79):--
I planted a lily yestreen at my window; I set it yestreen, and to-day it sprang up: When I opened the latch and leaned out of my window, It shadowed my face with its beautiful cup. O lily, my lily, how tall you are grown! Remember how dearly I loved you, my own. O lily, my lily, you'll grow to the sky! Remember I love you for ever and aye.
The same thought of love growing like a flower receives another turn (p. 69):--
On yonder hill I saw a flower; And, could it thence be hither borne, I'd plant it here within my bower, And water it both eve and morn. Small water wants the stem so straight; 'Tis a love-lily stout as fate. Small water wants the root so strong: 'Tis a love-lily lasting long. Small water wants the flower so sheen: 'Tis a love-lily ever green.
Envious tongues have told a girl that her complexion is not good. She replies, with imagery like that of Virgil's 'Alba ligustra cadunt, vaccinia nigra leguntur' (p. 31):--
Think it no grief that I am brown, For all brunettes are born to reign: White is the snow, yet trodden down; Black pepper kings need not disdain: White snow lies mounded on the vales Black pepper's weighed in brazen scales.
Another song runs on the same subject (p. 38):--
The whole world tells me that I'm brown, The brown earth gives us goodly corn: The clove-pink too, however brown, Yet proudly in the hand 'tis borne. They say my love is black, but he Shines like an angel-form to me: They say my love is dark as night; To me he seems a shape of light.
The freshness of the following spring song recalls the ballads of the Val de Vire in Normandy (p. 85):--
It was the morning of the first of May, Into the close I went to pluck a flower; And there I found a bird of woodland gay, Who whiled with songs of love the silent hour. O bird, who fliest from fair Florence, how Dear love begins, I prithee teach me now!-- Love it begins with music and with song, And ends with sorrow and with sighs ere long.
Love at first sight is described (p. 79):--
The very moment that we met, That moment love began to beat: One glance of love we gave, and swore Never to part for evermore; We swore together, sighing deep, Never to part till Death's long sleep.
Here too is a memory of the first days of love (p. 79):--
If I remember, it was May When love began between us two: The roses in the close were gay, The cherries blackened on the bough. O cherries black and pears so green! Of maidens fair you are the queen. Fruit of black cherry and sweet pear! Of sweethearts you're the queen, I swear.
The troth is plighted with such promises as these (p. 230):--
Or ere I leave you, love divine, Dead tongues shall stir and utter speech, And running rivers flow with wine, And fishes swim upon the beach; Or ere I leave or shun you, these Lemons shall grow on orange-trees.
The girl confesses her love after this fashion (p. 86):--
Passing across the billowy sea, I let, alas, my poor heart fall; I bade the sailors bring it me; They said they had not seen it fall. I asked the sailors, one and two; They said that I had given it you. I asked the sailors, two and three; They said that I had given it thee. It is not uncommon to speak of love as a sea. Here is a curious play upon this image (p. 227):--
Ho, Cupid! Sailor Cupid, ho! Lend me awhile that bark of thine; For on the billows I will go, To find my love who once was mine: And if I find her, she shall wear A chain around her neck so fair, Around her neck a glittering bond, Four stars, a lily, a diamond.
It is also possible that the same thought may occur in the second line of the next ditty (p. 120):--
Beneath the earth I'll make a way To pass the sea and come to you. People will think I'm gone away; But, dear, I shall be seeing you. People will say that I am dead; But we'll pluck roses white and red: People will think I'm lost for aye; But we'll pluck roses, you and I.
All the little daily incidents are beautified by love. Here is a lover who thanks the mason for making his window so close upon the road that he can see his sweetheart as she passes (p. 118):--
Blest be the mason's hand who built This house of mine by the roadside, And made my window low and wide For me to watch my love go by. And if I knew when she went by, My window should be fairly gilt; And if I knew what time she went, My window should be flower-besprent.
Here is a conceit which reminds one of the pretty epistle of Philostratus, in which the footsteps of the beloved are called _[Greek: erêreismena philêmpta]_ (p. 117):--
What time I see you passing by; I sit and count the steps you take: You take the steps; I sit and sigh: Step after step, my sighs awake. Tell me, dear love, which more abound, My sighs or your steps on the ground? Tell me, dear love, which are the most, Your light steps or the sighs they cost?
A girl complains that she cannot see her lover's house (p. 117):-
I lean upon the lattice, and look forth To see the house where my lover dwells. There grows an envious tree that spoils my mirth: Cursed be the man who set it on these hills! But when those jealous boughs are all unclad, I then shall see the cottage of my lad: When once that tree is rooted from the hills, I'll see the house wherein my lover dwells.
In the same mood a girl who has just parted from her sweetheart is angry with the hill beyond which he is travelling (p. 167):--